Artificial intelligence (AI) is not the Terminator lurking in the projector room, here to kick VFX artists into the unemployment line while a machine wins the Oscar.
As someone who has lived inside edit suites, dailies rooms and post facilities long enough to see both the romance and the rot of the industry, I’ll say this: AI isn’t here to replace the artists. It’s here to give them their lives back. It’s here to let them make better art and maybe, just maybe, go home in time to see their kids before they pass out from exhaustion.
Many VFX artists spend their hours, not designing dazzling new worlds, but doing tedious, mechanical labour: rotoscoping (painstakingly cutting people out of scenes, frame by frame), camera tracking (aligning digital space with real camera movement), green screen cleanup. Necessary? Yes. Soul-crushing? Also yes.
With AI, these jobs take seconds instead of days. But this isn’t some Skynet scenario. Those people don’t get cut, they get upgraded. They move from being digital janitors to digital architects. From pixel pushers to painters of emotion. They spend more time crafting atmosphere, light, the shimmer on skin, the flare on a dirty lens. They do what they signed up to do in the first place — make images that move people.
Powerful tech tool
And here’s the kicker: when we talk about AI making big, sweeping cinematic moments possible — drone shots over cityscapes, crowd scenes in ancient kingdoms, helicopter chases through canyon ranges — we’re not taking jobs from camera teams or stunt pilots. Those scenes were never going to happen in the first place. The budget never existed. The insurance would’ve been laughed out the room.
The idea would have died in a pitch doc, long before a gimbal was ever mounted. So when AI lets us simulate that helicopter chase without, you know, renting a chopper and hoping the actor doesn’t fall out, we’re not replacing anyone. We’re finally executing on dreams we used to bury.
This tech is a tool. A powerful one. And here in Africa that matters more than most places. Unlike the US, UK, or even India, we weren’t invited to the old studio system. We weren’t part of the club. We never had backlots in Burbank or pre-sold distribution pipelines.
In a weird way, that’s a blessing. We don’t have to dismantle anything to build something new. We get to start clean. Like skipping landlines for cellphones and being the first in the world to adopt mobile banking, we can leapfrog the legacy model and go direct to whatever comes next — and this time, we get to shape it.
If we’re going to use AI we have to do it right. And ethically. That means not feeding the machine on stolen work.
However, if we’re going to use AI we have to do it right. And ethically. That means not feeding the machine on stolen work. Too many of the current models were trained by sucking up art off the internet without asking permission, crediting anyone or paying a cent. That’s not innovation. That’s theft.
At The Refinery we insist: if you’re generating imagery with AI, you licence your source material properly. Better yet, commission African artists, photographers and stylists to build data sets that reflect our reality. Feed the machine on images we own, that we’re proud of, and that actually represent us.
Because here’s the thing: the machines are only as smart as the data we give them. And for most of modern history that data has been … well, not made with Africans in mind. Film stock was literally calibrated for white skin tones. You didn’t even have to be metaphorical about it, black and brown people came out faded, ashen, invisible.
The chemistry wasn’t designed to see Africans. And now, AI is being trained on data sets with the same problem: Western-centric, pale, monolithic. If we don’t actively build African image libraries of faces, clothing, architecture, rituals, humour, sadness, texture, we’ll just get algorithmic outputs that treat New York as “modern”, but Nairobi as “other”.
If we don’t actively build African image libraries of faces, clothing, architecture, rituals, humour, sadness, texture, we’ll just get algorithmic outputs that treat New York as ‘modern’ but Nairobi as ‘other’.
I’m not here for that. None of us should be. African culture is epic. We’ve got mythologies bigger than Marvel, battles grander than Game of Thrones, histories and futures too rich to squeeze through a foreign lens. But the tools to tell those stories have always been just out of reach.
Until now. With AI a filmmaker in Accra or Mombasa can generate a spaceship over Soweto or a digital palace in Kinshasa without selling a kidney or grovelling for some European fund’s approval. It’s not about cheating — it’s about catching up. It’s about giving the imagination the muscle it’s always deserved.
Still, with all that power, some people panic. They think everything will feel synthetic. That AI will kill spontaneity. But film has always thrived on chaos, and chaos is human. The greatest moments in cinema weren’t calculated. They were accidents.
A stray cat wandered into frame during The Godfather, and Brando started petting it. Now it’s iconic. Roy Scheider blurted out “You’re gonna need a bigger boat” in Jaws because the crew kept joking about how small their barge was. Heath Ledger’s Joker clapped slowly on a whim and changed the tone of the whole scene.
You can’t code that. You can’t prompt it. You have to feel it. That’s us. That’s what we do. And don’t forget, freedom is a double-edged sword. I’ve seen more great art come out of limited than unlimited budgets. Give someone a billion dollars and no deadlines and they will overthink themselves into oblivion. Give them 48 hours and a broken dolly, and they will come up with a shot that stabs you in the chest.
Coppola was literally crying on The Godfather set, thinking it was a disaster. He pushed through. That pressure made diamonds. AI might remove some limits, sure. But good directors will still impose new ones. The art will still come from tension, choices, taste. And that’s not going away.
Wielding AI
Look, the robots are coming for our jobs. Let’s not pretend otherwise. Some roles will shrink, some will shift, new ones will emerge. We are in that weird phase where the coin’s in the air — heads, tails, no-one knows how it will land. But the coin is still spinning. We are not passive. We get to nudge it. Guide it. Prep for where it might fall. That means training artists not to fear AI, but to wield it.
Teaching our teams how to collaborate with machines, not compete against them. Shifting from “how do I do this manually?” to “how do I do this better?” So no, I’m not scared. I’m excited. Because if we do this right, African cinema doesn’t just catch up to the world. We lead it. We invent new visual languages. We tell old stories in new ways.
We show our kids that their imagination isn’t limited to what fits in a dusty community theatre or a YouTube channel with 240p resolution. We give them a canvas the size of the sky, and we show them how to fill it. AI’s just a tool. But in the right hands — our hands — it’s a revolution.
• Orr is CEO of The Refinery, Africa’s largest postproduction house.
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